Invaded by gnats!

The minute I turned on the lights in the kitchen, I saw a swarm of tiny, black gnats flying here, there, and everywhere. Help! Gnats crawled on the refrigerator doors, all over the sink, AND on the back of my neck. They seemed to like anything white.

In desperation, Lisa turned off the kitchen lights, and turned on the chandelier in the dining area. Immediately, the white tablecloth was littered with the carcasses of a thousand gnats. An hour later, I was in the backyard, shaking the tablecloth. Yuck!

Is ours the only home that is invaded by gnats? It always happens in the morning before dawn.

Yesterday, I tried something different. I kept the lights off in the kitchen, dining area, and family room, and turned on only one light – the one next to the computer in the living room. Lisa complained that she could not cook without more lighting, but I convinced her to do so. She managed in the dark. David read the morning paper in the bedroom with the drapes drawn shut, and by the time he was ready to prepare his breakfast, it was dawn. The experiment worked: Except for the single lit lamp, there were no gnats in the rest of the house.

I guess this is the price of living in paradise. Every living thing wants to live here. Gnats and humans, alike.

Gigi —
Kansas gnats seem to come inside when there’s more food sitting out in the kitchen, (or an indoor picnic), usually at the beginning and end of summer. Any bananas sitting out, or an open trash can?

Some weird tiny-flowered bush near my seasonal hibiscus, seems to sprout gnats at the beginning of summer, so I hurry to close my screen door.

We get some tiny ants inside when it gets too cold and dry outside, but we’re mean in Kansas and use bug spray behind the sink.

I’m sure the Hawaiian gnats are happier than mine!

Do you need an indoor gecko? One friend who lived with several folks in one house in Honolulu in the ’70s, said they had a resident gecko who slept on top of one particular picture frame ini the living room, and they could pet it!

Do you get centipedes commonly crawling in the house? One Hawaiian book I read warned of them crawling up bedposts and to put water cups around the post…

My nieces friend got a centipede sting near her mouth while she fell asleep on the floor watching tv and she had to go to the docs. We used to have centipedes crawling in the house until I installed a rubber flap attached to the bottom of the screen door. I also installed a new door threshold and adjusted the wood doors jambs for a tighter seal. Centipedes could be seen crawling in our moss rock wall.

we do have an ant problem and used to have a roach problem but its in control as we haven’t seem them criiters running around. I can control the ants/roaches from coming around the kitchen, sink, etc. using Dead-Fast which I found at City Mill but its quite expensive($5) and last only a couple of weeks. And we know ants like spiders will try and try again to reach whatever they want(water, food, telephones(they seem to like the wire wrappings), etc. . Dead-Fast looks like a lipstick tube that has a white chalk stick that you draw around the kichen counters. I and my neighbor have seen it with our own eyes, the ants will not cross it and if they do crawl on it it dies, even the roaches are not around whatever you encircle this with. I’ve gone thru may ant houses that don’t do nothing to control ants but this stuff actually works for 2 weeks.